Custom domain or free subdomain? An honest comparison for small businesses

Technically, very little. A subdomain can be indexed, can rank, can carry structured data, can take bookings and can serve HTTPS. Search engines have no rule against them, and a well-built subdomain site will out-rank a badly-built custom-domain site every time.

What it costs is perception and portability. A shared address reads as provisional to some customers, it is harder to say out loud, it will not match a professional email address, and if you ever leave the platform, the address does not come with you.

You are testing an idea and might change the name. You are a sole trader whose customers arrive through Instagram, WhatsApp or word of mouth and never type an address at all. You are seasonal and only need a live page for four months. You want a landing page today and a decision next quarter.

In all of those cases, publish free, get the page working, and revisit when the business has told you what it wants to be called.

You print anything — cards, menus, signage, vans. You want name@yourbusiness.com. You compete against established local names where the address is part of the pitch. You run ads and need the address to look legitimate in the ad itself. You intend to build long-term search visibility you keep regardless of platform.

At roughly €12 to €20 a year for the name, it is one of the cheapest credibility purchases available to a small business — the cost is the setup, not the domain.

Short, sayable over a phone, and spelled the way it sounds. Avoid hyphens and numbers. Prefer your country's extension if you serve one country — .ie, .co.uk, .de, .it all carry a small local trust advantage — and take the .com as well if you can afford both.

Do not squeeze keywords into the name. "best-cheap-plumber-dublin24.com" helps nothing and ages badly.

Switching from a subdomain to a custom domain is safe if three things happen together: every old URL redirects permanently to its exact new equivalent, canonical tags and the sitemap update to the new host, and the new address is submitted in Search Console.

Publish on the free address today. If the site earns a single enquiry, buy the domain that week and connect it. That order costs you nothing and protects you from paying for a name you do not end up using.